JULY 15, 2006

McLaren drivers

Pedro de la Rosa is driving for McLaren at the moment and the team looks set to keep him for the next few races and see how things go, but that does not mean that the Spanish driver will remain in the car for the rest of the year. Team boss Ron Dennis told the F1 media yesterday that Juan Pablo Montoya could be back in the car later in the year but that sounded more like a man negotiating a settlement with a driver than there being any serious chance of Montoya coming back when his attention has already switched to America.

The team has yet to decide what to do later in the season but it would be a good opportunity for the team to do a little experimentation with its various drivers with a view to the future.

It should be noted that when Montoya was injured last year the two test drivers: de la Rosa and Alexander Wurz shared the replacement work and it may well be that de la Rosa and Gary Paffett will both race later this summer. It is less likely that Lewis Hamilton will get a chance but that should not be totally excluded as a possibility because if the team is seriously considering Hamilton as a driver in 2007. It would be a very clever idea to give him the chance to race in the final three Grands Prix of the year as they are tracks that he will need to know for the future and cannot test at in advance.